Saturday, November 12, 2005
When Chances Collide; DNA & "Exoneration"; Suggestibility & Gullibility at http://tillerstillers.blogspot.com/2005/11/when-chances-collide-dna.html
and
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
DNA in the News: Imperfect Evidence and Imperfect Justice, at http://tillerstillers.blogspot.com/2002/08/dna-in-news-imperfect-evidence-and.htm
A new article by Keith A. Findley apparently makes an analogous point. But Findley draws a starkly different moral than I do: He thinks the Innocence Projects define "exoneration" and "innocence" too narrowly rather than too broadly.
- I think that some guilty people are wrongly convicted and that when we think that a wrongful conviction of a probably guilty person has been properly set aside, we should not refer to such an event as an "exoneration." We should call a spade a spade. We should say, simply, that the conviction was properly set aside, and we should not pretend (unless we have reason to think that such is the case) that an innocent person has been exonerated.
Under many circumstances, of course, the wrongful action (or inaction) of some public official makes it difficult or impossible to make a reasonable judgment about the guilt or innocence of some person. When that is the case, that is what we should say is the case.
1 comment:
There's a practical aspect to this question if there's a possibility of compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
Thus in one case the conviction was later quashed, but my impression is that the person apparently committed the offence, if judged on a civil standard. And this was apparently confirmed by evidence that came to light later.
In another case, the evidence was nugatory. There was no real evidence of guilt except the question of why the person had been associating with known criminals.
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